Author
Topic: Heart in the highlands (Read 78 times)

A small well-armed company traverses Martana moorlands. Twenty three women, all looking like hardy veteran warriors. The tallest and fairest of them rides in the middle. Blue slightly slanted eyes, clear and cold as running water. Head shaven at the sides, the remaining honey-blonde strip of hair is kept in a tight braid. Splint armour dyed gold and black covers her wiry frame. Mortal women around her all wear their hair in the same fashion, a Lowlander would instantly recognise them as daughters of the tribes living along Martana and Thalis and even some hailing from Tharibana badlands. Each sports a sturdy chainshirt and a light aventailed conic helmet. Composite bows, curved blades and horseman's picks are tightly strapped to their high-bowed saddles. It has been five years since they left the steppes. They are coming home.They are riding due west, chasing the setting sun. Two women lead the company. They look nothing like the others - stocky, clad in leathers and carrying long wicked guisarmes. They belong to the peoples of Broken lake. It is too obvious how different they are from the steppe warriors and a rift of enmity is still lying between them, but they trudge on in silence because they serve Rannveig the Fair now and do not dare to renounce her.

There was a time when the entirety of this land belonged to Rannveig's clan. She was the granddaughter of both old chief Huneric Otker and Hella Hazemoon, the last windspeaker of Alnajaf. A princess of the steppes. But a feud with clan Dubhaine left her an orphan and an outcast. Enemies poured in from east, west and north. Men of Armok, Lowlanders and Rathgari alike descended upon her clan. The sole survivor of that great war, she turned to a southern lord for protection and vengeance and swore to serve him for five years. And he served him well. Dubhaines are now dead or slumbering and her time as a sworn sword has run out. She returns to the steppes as she left them - a woman with no title or fame, with but a handful of loyal warriors. All of them women for such is her habit from her youngest years. As the sun is about to set, the landscape begins to rise gradually and walls of a well-fortified town become visible in the distance. Eculbas. This is where she was born. A sense of nostalgia and excitement. A stinging shadow of fear. What happens next? Who knows.